Poetry Class I: Paragraph I

This next series of poems is actually parts of a poem which will be due on Monday for the poetry workshop I have just started.   The prompt for the free write yesterday was "We lived north of...." and we all wrote whatever came to mind. The week assignment was to then refine the poem for next week.  Every few moments, the teacher redirected the poem by saying something like "the temperature changed"  and a new stanza would being.  The poem fragment below is the first stanza.  I have done a bit of revision and will be doing some revision for the next week on each stanza since there are seven of them.  I actually did grow up somewhat north of Gary and we did smell the acrid smell of Gary sometimes even where we were (to the north and west).  Beyond that it is poetic license. 

We lived north of Gary, Indiana where

tidy rows of smokestacks belched dark

plumes by day, sickly yellow plumes bathed

in beams of sodium lights by night.

We coughed all the time, our noses

caked with dried snot, our clothes grey with

soot, our cheeks ruddy and scabbed with cold.